A sad day in local media today as the Westman Journal weekly paper has announced the ceasing of operations in a post on its website.
In the story, general business decline in advertising has been cited as the reason for the closure.
The Journal was founded in 2002 as the Wheat City Journal by Bruce Penton, publishing its first issue almost 17 years ago to the day on April 25, 2002. It was purchased in 2004 by Glacier Media, with Penton leaving in 2007. A name change in 2009 followed, adopting the Westman Journal moniker. Penton returned for a year in 2010 in between stints with the Medicine Hat News.
The loss is another hit to local media diversity, which saw the loss of CKX Television in 2009.
While I try not to have posts in this section be personal, this website’s history with the newspaper makes that separation difficult to impossible. The paper first interviewed me as a young entrepreneur in August of 2005 just months after eBrandon was started and I’ll never forget the thrill of being featured. Over the years there would be a handful of mutually beneficial advertising trades, most recently with a box on their opinion page that displayed the top discussion threads of the week. In looking at initially getting this site off of the ground it would be naive to not credit some of that initial success to that relationship, something I will always be thankful for.
Reaction has been ongoing this afternoon in the discussion forums. You can read those thoughts and share your own in the attached discussion link.